Coding Dojo

I decided to attend Coding Dojo as an alternative to University primarily because of the cost and it is, without a doubt, one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I had dabbled in programming a little bit and even took a C++ course in community college, but I had almost no knowledge of what I was getting into. I decided to take some of the free courses (Web Fundamentals and Algorithms I-IV) provided by Coding Dojo as preliminary courses and really felt welcomed by the instructors (Speros and Jason). It was a great precursor because I found that after I started Coding Dojo, I had the same feeling. Instead of just coasting through the Web Fundamentals portion (since I had taken the class before the program started), I helped the class as much as I could. This proved to be a great solidifier for my learning, so I continued to do so throughout the program and three days before the program ended, I got a job as a Systems Engineer.

My fellow cohorts, instructors, and the TA’s were instrumental in my completing the course and without them, I don’t think I would have gotten a job so soon. In particular, Wes Harper, Jason Franz, and Minh Nguyen were always there to assist me if I needed it. I can’t thank them or Coding Dojo enough for how my life has changed!

The 14 week on-site full stack developer program was very challenging and taught you the basics of 3 different stacks. During my time as a student I was able to learn Python, JavaScript, and Swift as well as their surrounding topics. As a full-stack developer, I am able to deploy a full website from client to server to database. With each language, we learned a multitude of supplementary skills such as responsive web design and front-end frameworks like Flask, Django, and Angular. In the iOS stack I learned how to use local storage and make apps I could personally use. If given the chance to polish up my project, I would proudly deploy it to the Apple App Store.

A majority of the curriculum is stressed on Algorithms and Data Structures, which in the end will land you a job (during the technical interview phase). Every morning, we do algorithms to imitate a real life interview situation.

What I gained from Coding Dojo, is not only the skills needed in today's tech climate, but the ability to learn on my own and to pick up new skills that will help me land a job. After Coding Dojo, I took up freelance developing where I was able to expand my knowledge and learn new frameworks like React.

I decided to dive into the tech world after many years of getting by with my two former jobs. Don't get me wrong I loved what I did, Oral Surgeon's assistant and Youth Pastor, but in the area I was living, with a second kid on the way, it just wasn't a great outlook. I saw that the tech world provided growth and stability and after several unsuccessful months of job applying and hearing that I just needed more skills I decided to take a leap into one of these coding boot camps. A friend had ushered me towards Coding Dojo and I didn't have to look back. I was apprehensive and anxious arriving on my first day but soon found that this was a great place to learn and struggle through problems with peers. The only experience that I brought to the table was some HTML/CSS that I had done in high school, which I was 15 years removed from, alongside some computer graphics classes that I had taken as well. Coding Dojo does a great job of giving an intuitive platform with just clear enough instructions that you're not spoon-fed everything. They put into place great instructors, can't say enough about Gikuyu Nderitu (D2) and Anthony Morris (Tony), whose goals were to not just have us complete the material, but really understand and struggle through understanding what it was we were building. I definitely appreciated both D2 and Tony, who instead of giving us answers to our questions gave us more questions to help us find our own way to the answer. One of the things I've learned through this process is that through struggle and the intentional gaps in the platform an exponential amount of learning was provided, though at the time it was a pain. After the immersive 14 weeks, they even help you decompress and set you up with success by providing you with an on-site career advisor. You take a week with your cohort to normalize yourself and begin to sharpen all your tools to take into the job market. Herman Pryor did a tremendous job building up our confidence to realize what it was we just went through. I cannot compliment him enough in the work he does for the students at the Coding Dojo. The wonderful people that were at the Coding Dojo help invested in my future and I will always be grateful for the job that they did.

I attended Coding Dojo in 2016. It was a good environment and my cohort was full of great people. The programming knowledge you can learn here is real. There is algorithm practice every morning, informative lectures, and challenging course work. The campus is open to students 24/7 so you can spend as much time as you need studying on campus, which can be very helpful if you don't have a good study space at home.

From my experience, hard working people succeed here. The people who always come to morning algorithms, spend extra time studying, and work together with other students on algorithms and exercises.

After graduation, Coding Dojo's career services department will actively send you information about job opportunities and if you want they will always be willing to meet with you to talk about your job hunt.

In my opinion, the biggest strength of Coding Dojo's curriculum is JavaScript. If you are interested in web development using JavaScript, this is a fantastic bootcamp.

Coding Dojo can help you learn what you would have taken you years to learn in few months. The structured currilculum and time crunch to stay up with the rest of the cohort will drive you to accomplish this. Throughout the Bootcamp you have to work harder than you’ve ever worked before. You will be frustrated when you spend long hours fixing one problem but once you fix your problem, you will have incredible sense of accomplishment. You will be ready to move on to next challenge. You should chose to do this bootcamp only if you can give 100%. They offer 3 stacks. It's pretty challenging and can get overwhelming. You have to put in so many hours orelse you are not getting the most of the bootcamp. The best part of the bootcamp will be your cohort mates. It's very important to know them because they will be your partners in struggle for the next few months. Coding Dojo has a 20 min rule. You will have to struggle for 20mins before you go for help. The instructors will not help you before the 20 min rule. After 20 mins, you will have to approach your cohort mates for help. This will help you verbalize your problem. This will also help your cohort mates verbalize their solution. For me, this is the best part of the bootcamp. After you and two other cohort mates after struggle but couldnt fix your problem, instructors will provide their help. 

Once you graduate out of the bootcamp, they have solid career services and one year residency program. They also provide workshops based on alumni requests. They have algorithm whiteboarding for alumni once every week. Please dont join the bootcamp expecting there will be a job waiting for you upon graduation. You have to work lot harder once you graduate and please dont expect more than an entry level position.

I had a fairly good time at Coding Dojo. Asking for help and learning from your cohort mates will get you a long way. You will a LOT of skills in a short time, skills that may take several months to learn by yourself.

PROS:
- Learn how to make fully developed web application/apps in only few days. If we were on our own, it could take months to learn!
-Become an indepent developer.
- Exposure to many different technologies
- Peers willing to help and work together
- The technologies and skills you learn will help gain interest of many recruiters.

CONS:
-not enough practice for algorithm challenges for job interview

It was certainly an amazing experience. What they say from the very beginning (actually, from the first time you go there for a campus visit) is that the course is very intensive, and students should expect to put around 60-80 hours of work every single week. It seems like a lot, but I tell you that those hours go by so fast (specially during exams where you can swear an hour goes by every 5 minutes of work done) that you barely notice. The fact that Coding Dojo teaches 3 full-stacks instead of just 1 it is a huge plus. I have very fond memories of arriving at 5am on campus to start studing while everything was still dark, fueled by cold coffee from an Starbucks nearby and peanut bars from the kitchen drawer. I highly encourage everyone who are considering joininng a coding bootcamp to at least make one visit to Coding Dojo to check it out. Have to mention Donald, my campus career services manager, for always being there whenever I needed his help. 

Looking back, most of my frustration with Coding Dojo can be attributed to the way it was marketed. Be wary of the 'zero-to-hero' promises. They can't teach everyone to code and you won't be hounded with job offers after you graduate. Most importantly, you won’t just ‘Become a Software Developer in 14 weeks.’ You’ll have had a very rushed, crash course with sizable price-tag. 

Yes, you'll learn a lot, but I'm not sure that you'll learn very efficiently - and no, you won't stack up to someone with a CS degree. Much of Coding Dojo's curriculum is internally focused and tends to follow more of an inductive reasoning pattern. They'll spend a lot of time focused on semantics, and language-specific syntax, and breeze through concepts. They continually emphasize that they're teaching self-sufficiency - more accurately, they'll avoid teaching. The curriculum focuses on outdated versions (unavoidable to some degree), but this becomes a problem when they emphasize language specifics over concepts. You’ll learn some basic debugging methods, and get great at copying and pasting code. The pace just doesn’t afford much time for foundational understanding. Regardless of whether you get it or not, you have to keep moving. Honestly, If you're disciplined enough, and can afford to, you may be better off devoting the time you would spend at Coding Dojo to working through learning plans on Pluralsight (or some other online learning platform).

You probably won't find a job as quickly as you think. I saw a recent stat that showed the majority of attending students hold degrees from an accredited university as well. Most of the marketed graduate employment stats are misleading. As a military veteran and a graduate of the program (with some prior university experience), I struggled to even get interviews. A degree, unfortunately, still seems to be one of the biggest factors in finding employment. Coding Dojo alone is not an effective alternative to a traditional degree (though their marketing may convince you otherwise), and at its price point, I don’t believe it’s even a worthwhile addition. The quality just isn’t there. So, for those looking to avoid the traditional approach to a CS degree, I'd advise you keep looking.

Additionally, much of the Coding Dojo staff consists of prior students (red flag) - but that’s not something you know prior to enrollment. You are told you’ll be taught by “industry professionals.” Don't get me wrong - I really enjoyed being around most of the Dojo staff, but they seriously lacked the technical experience I was led to believe that they had. Most hadn't worked as developers outside of Coding Dojo.

Post-grad, I am full of regret and stressed due to the burdensome loan. I finally found an internship through some other connections (I got lucky) - still don't feel qualified.

TLDR - The program isn't accurately marketed. The curriculum is lacking, and most of the promises made are not promises they can make. If you're considering this program as an alternative to pursuing a traditional CS degree, don't. If you have plenty of prior experience and want a crash course on some unfamiliar tech (and happen to have a spare 20 grand laying around), go for it

Although Marketed, it does not replace a CS degree. There are basic fundamentals a CS degree covers that you do not within the boot camp.  You do learn some fundamentals in terms of the three Stacks, however I felt that the curriculum could use an update as some material is outdated. However it is dependent on who your instructor is, if they are bad you are going to have issues. It should be noted that most of the instructors don't have direct industry knowledge. Most are graduates of the program. Don't get me wrong, they still can be very knowledgeable.   You do much of the learning with your group via "strength through struggle." However I highly recommend going through the fundamentals of the languages you want to learn before coming to the boot camp. Be prepared to spend at least 80-90 hours a week studying the material if you are going to come to class.  Although you will be more prepared after leaving the boot-camp. You will have to make it a habit to spend time to continue to better yourself. I wish they would have focused on two stacks instead of three to give more time to have those building blocks and fundamentals of those two stacks instead of cramming three into 14 weeks.  The career adviser is very good in terms of fixing resumes and helping you prepare for mock interviews. This is a plus if you struggle with these things. Although I got a job in the field after graduating, I just feel my experiences could have been better.